Archive for the ‘Micro’ Category

This project had many ups and downs, sadly ending in a down. My greatest strength caused my demise since my aesthetically pleasing container, the Altoids box, is conductor and my LEDs, connected to the side, failed to blink properly. Even though my project didnt end up exactly like I intended, I still learned a lot from this project and had a bunch of fun experimenting with my Arduino Micro.

On Adafruit Learning System there are a lot of cool tutorials and this particular one is based on the Arduino Micro used to upcycles old Next keyboards:

Ladyada and pt had an old NeXT keyboard with a strong desire to get it running on a modern computer. These keyboards are durable, super clicky, and very satisfying to use! However, they are very old designs, specifically made for NeXT hardware, pre-ADB and pre-USB! That means you can’t just plug the keyboard into an ADB or PS/2 port or PS/2 to USB converter (even though it looks similar). In fact, I have no idea what the protocol or pinout is named, so we’ll just call it “non-ADB NeXT Keyboard”

I use a micro, but just about anything will do. There’s some Sugru on there to keep the sharp bits from catching on clothing/pockets. Usb battery powers the whole thing. It’s pretty bright, definitely not subtle.

John Thomson managed to build a pressure sensor to behave like a switch, when it’s in an idle state the LED is off, if you apply some pressure, light goes on:

The pressure pad doesn’t just work straight out the box – it requires a little bit of craft. What I’ve done is sandwich a pressure sensitive conductive sheet – known as Velostat – between two pieces of felt. I then stitched some conductive thread through each piece of felt – this applies a current to the pad and when the sandwich is put together, the circuit is complete. The Velostat acts like a resistor – the value changes when pressure is applied. It’s then just a case of writing out code that tells the LED to come on when the pressure reading goes over a certain threshold.

Steve Yoshida is a systems engineer and worked on a project involving Arduino Micro and Infrared remote adapter:

My new Arduino sat on the shelf for a few weeks before I came up with a quick project that I wanted to use it for. I use XBMC a lot on both PC and Raspberry Pi and wanted a quick way to get IR keyboard inputs from a remote. I had used the IR library for Arduino in the past so I was already pretty familiar with the hardware and code involved. What made the Arduino Micro ideal for this project was the keyboard emulation supported by the board and also its compact size…

Reach is a large-scale interactive mural and musical instrument created for the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh as part of the Tough Art residency program. There are no visible electronics, but when users touch both the moon and a star (either alone or by holding hands with others) a tone is played.

Finally found some time today to solder the parts onto my first OSH Park PCB. The primary motivation for this was to learn Eagle and try out OSH Park, so I wanted to make something with only components I’d already purchased, and that’s why it has a whole Arduino Micro attached to it even though a smaller board (or even just a lone microcontroller) would’ve been sufficient. I didn’t get the displays lined up quite right, so there’s a small gap between them that looks obvious in this photo but isn’t so bad if you’re further away and looking at it head-on. But my learning for next time is to watch out for the positioning of odd-sized components.

I wanted to share with everyone a project I worked on for a recent sci-fi/comic convention. I have always been a fan of fantasy, sci-fi and comics. A few months ago I started working on an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper (ODST) costume and weapon.

I wanted to make the sword something that would literally make folks stop in their tracks and take notice at a convention. For this I turned to the Arduino Microprocessor and some of the accessories developed at Adafruit.

The full idea is to give the impression of a pulsing energy sword. The perfect item to light this sword are the NeoPixel strips (60 LEDs per meter). The complete package is a sword that would light up when you turned it on, and play a sound indicating that it was switched on.…think Star Wars light saber. Once lit the NeoPixels would pulse from blue to purple to red, and back to blue. What weapon would be complete without sounds? To give the sword a more realistic look and sound we used the ADXL345 to be able to detect motion, this would trigger a sound event via the VS1053 breakout.

To complete the package I used 2x liPo 2600mAh batteries hooked in parallel through a UBEC to give a constant and clean 5v for the LED’s and controller.

The costume is designed by Sean Bradley, who also molded the sword parts out of PET Plastic and Resin. DragonCon photos were provided by Brian Humphrey.

Dhavalis lives in Surat (India) and grew up watching Sci-Fi and Super Hero Movies which made him believe that technology can overcome human weaknesses. He wrote us to share Netra (it means “eye” in Sanskrit), a project done during his second year of undergraduate engineering studies:

Netra is an eye for visually impaired, a device based on Echolocation principle. It uses Arduino Micro, Ultrasonic sensor and vibrating motor. Vibration of the motor increases with decrease in distance and vibration decreases with increase in distance between device and object in front. Build this device for people suffering from Retinitis Pigmentosa Disorder.